Think back to music 40 years ago. The most popular thing that comes to mind from that era is vinyl. With vinyl came a guaranteed purchase - which meant money for the songwriter.
But, as music has shifted coming into the 21st century, you can get any song you'd like, right there on your phone, for one singular subscription. While that's great for convenience, one thing it isn't exactly ideal for is the songwriters themselves. Especially when it comes to the money side of things
And that's something country star Vince Gill has noticed has changed the country scene - permanently. As reported by Whiskey Riff, he's now gone into the details about why that's an issue for musicians in our beloved genre.
"What's harder and harder and harder as time goes on is getting paid for your work," he explained. "The income stream is dried up in a big way. I used to make money for writing songs but also for selling records. You don't sell records anymore. What you might make from selling records is gone."
He also said that he doesn't believe the notion that record labels are profiting more than they were during the original vinyl boom. "I don't know enough to be dangerous, but I can't fathom how they could be... If they aren't selling millions of records for 20 bucks a piece."
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He also explained that he hasn't received any money at all off of platforms like YouTube. "In all the times I've been streamed on YouTube or any of those formats, I've never received anything. So it's kind of hard getting paid for what it is that you create. You can have a hit song, and back in the day, you'd make a fortune (with) radio play and record sales. Those were all a part of it."
"A lot of that has dried up, and I think that's why publishing deals are so much harder to get now because I bet there's not more than a couple hundred signed songwriters in (Nashville). There used to be 2,000 to 4,000 people that had publishing deals."
